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May

6

It is said that history repeats itself. Well, here we are once again in 1870. In that year two women were fighting to keep the black man from having the right to vote. Why? Because they wanted the power that the black man was about to receive.

Does this sound familiar to today? In 1869-70, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony vehemently opposed the ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment of the US Constitution giving the black man the right to vote. Before this, in July, 1848, Frederick Douglas had stood with Stanton at Seneca Falls in the cause of women’s suffrage. At this first women’s rights convention, he placed his signature on the Declaration of Sentiments and did not rescind it as did others. He was a close friend of the Anthony family, and often visited their home. In 1862, he even delivered the eulogy upon the death of Anthony’s father.

But then when Douglas and other black men were about to receive the power that Stanton and Anthony wanted themselves, their answer was to mount a campaign against the black man’s suffrage. Both of these women were now willing to throw the black man under the bus so as to insure that they received the power that he was about to receive.

Déjà vu, all over again. Today, in another contest for power, we have a black man who stood with the Democrats to support the party’s nominee for president in the 2004 election. Barack Obama was the keynote speaker at the 2004 Democratic National Convention and received high praises from the party as their next shooting star; that is, until that star wanted the rights that a woman, Hillary Clinton, had been planning for.

Just as Stanton and Anthony did to Frederic Douglas, so Clinton is equally willing to do to Barack Obama. She too is fighting to stop the black man so that she, the woman, can have what she equally thought was rightfully hers. She too has in her mind that she has fought for the black man; and if the black man is going to get what she wants, then the solution is to stop the black man.

Barack, how does it feel to be a Frederick Douglas with feminist “friends”? Like Douglas, Obama is a compelling and inspiring orator. Like Douglas whose mother was black and his father was white, Obama’s mother was white and his father was black. Like Douglas who was raised by his grandmother, so Obama was raised by his grandmother. But also like Douglas, the woman who once stood beside Obama, has equally become his opponent.

It cannot be overlooked that Douglas’s first owner in his days of slavery—who very likely was also his father—was Aaron Anthony, the same last name of the one who turned against him and wanted to see his failure. But neither did Susan B. Anthony own him. It looks to me that the black man today is once again proving that feminists don’t own them. Oh that they could come to the full reality of this.